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What Makes a Great Teacher for Students with LD
Introducing the Hybrid Teacher
Jerome J. Schultz, Ph.D.
Director and Clinical Neuropsychologist
Help with essay on What makes a good language teacher?
The Learning Lab @ Lesley University
I was asked by LDOnline to write an article about what makes a good teacher of kids with learning disabilities. I hope that by putting this task in an historical context, it will reflect the realities that educators face and the environments in which they work, and that it pays respect to this very difficult and very important task. The list of traits you will find near the end of this article should not be construed as a “report card” for teachers, nor is it an effort to describe the ideal teacher. It is offered as a way to acknowledge both the challenges and the opportunities that exist for teachers working in tough times.
Having started out my professional career as a middle school special education teacher, by the grace of wonderful mentors, hard work, a great family and good fortune, I have evolved into a neuropsychologist serving as a director of a university based clinic for children and adolescents with learning disabilities and related learning difficulties. Kids come to us because they have trouble learning. Many of them have other things going on that make learning difficult, but most of them have what most people regard as a learning disability�a neurologically based condition that makes it hard to do many of the tasks required by students in school. For these kids, the unrelenting frustration involved in taking in, processing and producing information is like pushing a large stone up a steep hill. There may be occasional plateaus or small ledges on which the stone can rest (summer vacations?), but most of these kids experience school as a difficult, frustrating and emotionally unsettling place. Too few know the joys that come from repeated successes; too many are beaten down very early by sense that they are supposed to be able to do what the other kids do, and do it as easily, but for some reason, they just can’t.
In the pre-inclusionary times of the mid-seventies and early eighties, college graduates who chose to be special educators ended up working in learning centers, resource rooms or self-contained programs. They had the time to work with a relatively small number of kids and provide them with intensive, direct instruction that was supposed to make a difference. In some cases that model worked; kids learned and moved through school and became successful, happy and productive adults. Although there were methods that were designed to help students overcome or work around their learning disabilities, too often these approaches were not used well enough or long enough to have the desired impact. Also, there was very little done to evaluate the effectiveness of specialized approaches for individual kids, and much of special education was characterized by good intensions and warm-hearted guesswork. We thought that these were the “glory days” of special education by who knows? The pendulum continues to swing…
Over the past two decades, primarily as a consequence of the inclusion movement, we have witnessed a reduction in specialized programs, and a corresponding large-scale return of students with learning (and other) disabilities to “regular” classes. Since a majority of seasoned faculty working in “regular” classrooms were trained as “regular” and not “special” educators, many--despite their excellent track records-- find themselves ill-prepared or inadequately supported to meet the special needs of students who require specialized instruction.
The re-integration of children with so-called special needs into regular classrooms, coupled with the increasing emphasis on standards-based education and “high-stakes” testing, has placed new and difficult demands on students and teachers. It has brought to light the reality that in far too may cases, especially for students of color and whose first language is not English, special education has simply meant making school easier by cutting down the work load and turning down the difficulty level. This (mal?)practice left us with in a large population of students who were not prepared to return to the demands of an integrated regular classroom, especially one in which the train moves at the same speed, on the same track for everyone, where the station-stops are few and far between, and where you’d better hurry to get back aboard before the engine pulls out. The consequence of this situation is that many kids are not being adequately served; both those with learning disabilities and those with other impediments to learning.
So…I am worried. As a psychologist, I am worried about kids and I am worried about their families. And as a teacher educator, I worry about teachers. A lot.
Yet I am optimistic, for I have been to the classroom (hundreds of them, in fact) and there is light. For example, one of the major contributions of inclusion, when well conceived and well supported, has been the transformation that takes place when talented and motivated regular and special educators work together on a team. In my role as a consultant and as a teacher educator in a university that embraces an inclusive philosophy and the practices that support it, I have witnessed the emergence of what I call the Hybrid Teacher�a new kind of professional who creatively builds bridges between curriculum and kids�all kinds of kids with (to use Mel Levine’s words) “all kinds of minds.” Let me use this opportunity to list some of the characteristics of this teacher, so that you will recognize one when you see her or him. In my view, a professional with many of the traits listed below is the closest thing I can find to a “great teacher” for kids with learning disabilities.
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